The Messines Ridge mines explosion was approximately 500 tons of high explosive -- a massive and terrifying blast, indeed. The Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917, when the ammunition ship Mont Blanc caught fire and detonated, is generally considered to be the largest explosion prior to the invention of atomic warfare (pace Tunguska, Siberia). It was thought to be equivalent to 2.9 kilotonnes (3,200 tons) of high explosive and it totally devastated Halifax, Nova Scotia.
@@AmedeeVanGasse I think the 1916 Black Tom explosion of ~900 tons would probably qualify as the largest conventional explosion in a military conflict at the time, even though it wasn't on a battlefield. In that case it was German saboteurs who blew up a munitions store on an island in New York Harbor, damaging the Statue of Liberty (one reason why tourists are no longer allowed in the torch to this day). The Lehigh Valley Railroad, which operated the site, sued the Third Reich for $50M but received nothing. After the second world war, the West German government paid LVRR $95M by installments, making the final payment in 1979, at the waning end of the disco era! I do think it quite touching that the people of Nova Scotia have provided the City of Boston with its official Christmas Tree for over 50 years, in thanks for its assistance to Halifax in 1917. Boston learned of the explosion by telegraph and sent a train with food, water, medical supplies and staff which arrived two days after the explosion to relieve the local medical responders who had been working continuously.
@@principals16842 the greatest hero in Halifax was probably the telegraph operator. He sent out messages to stop the trains that were headed into Halifax, thus saving hundreds of lives. Yeah, I'm sure you can guess why he got recognized posthumously.
Both my grandfathers were in the battle of Passchendaele. One was seriously wounded, and both were captured by the Germans. Both were later released in prisoner exchanges. My father's father was wounded by shell fragments on the whole of his left side by a shell that landed less than six feet from him. He lost an ear and an eye and a couple of tendons. His best friend who was helping him out of the trench was blown to small pieces, but saved granddad's life. He suffered partial deafness and blindness and trouble from all the metal that stuck in him.
My great great uncle fought and died in WW1 during the battle of Passchendaele in 1917. He fought in the British army. His body was never recovered as it sank under the mud. Respect to the brave men who tunneled under the enemy lines as well as the men who fought in the trenches. Lest we forget
@@sdimebagedon22 The Germans, Austro-Hungarians and Ottomans were brave men too. We shouldn't forget that both the Entente and Central Powers were human too
There's An Australian movie on this that some of the stills from this clip were taken from called "Beneath Hill 60". RIP Tiffin. Edit: I don't know why this comment looks like I am replying to myself.
I'm a certified welder who once worked in Boston with "tunnel rats" for a brief time and I can tell you they would have had no need for basic training & would probably would have been in better shape, even at their age, than most soldiers.
In the Diary of the 3rd Battalion, Auckland (Countess of Ranfurly's Own) and Northland Division, was an incident recorded by the Colonel during WW1 on the Western Front. They had a party of Sappers attached to them from one of the South Island regiments, from what was Coal Mining country even then. The Regiment took up a position that had been held by one of the Scots Divisions and the officers thought the trenches were EXTREMELY poor, and set about digging, under light, undirected fire, new trenches. He watched as one of the platoons set to, and noticed that five of the men stood and polished their entrenching tools QUITE thoroughly first. He asked the Major what they thought they were doing, and was told "These are our professionals sir, they know what they are about". And then watched while they out dug the regulars three to one, and when they were finished their section, carried on and finished the other soldiers work to the same standard.
The part that shocked me the most, is that i‘ve learned more about the first world war, by just watching this video, than i‘ve actually learned about it in school… Thank you for making history interesting!
@@JTL1980kind It exists so that you can receive more information than a cursory introduction or a brief overview of a particular event. And so that you learn to evaluate and analyze historical events. Why do I have to explain the value of an education to another adult? Didn’t you have parents?
My grandfather was there when the Messines Ridge mine was detonated. To my knowledge, he never spoke about it, or precious little of his other extraordinary experiences on the front line . It seems such incredible stories from war veterans stirred little interest at all after they returned. It was also said that many WW1 vets knew no one could possibly believe them in any case, so they - so many millions of them - just, so psychologically unhealthily, bottled these things up. I can't imagine this in an age when we 'moan when our arses are on fire'.
I completely understand the NEED to bottle things up. I'm a veteran, rated 100% Disabled, almost entirely for "mental issues." My most aggravating pain is that my family of origin (siblings, cousins) won't believe me when I say what I experienced. NONE of my disability involves having delusions of anything, but as soon as my family learned I'm "mental," they won't believe anything I say. Now 26 years after being sent home from the military, I've decided to no longer have anything to do with that family. They've been toxic. I've been a fool for trying to win them over.
An absolutely fascinating and informative video ! I only heard of this monumental undertaking about 5 years ago whilst I was watching a History Channel special on World War 1. WW I unfortunately, was only skimmed over in my grammar school and high school history courses. I have since that time learned many fascinating facts about that war (to end all wars) which few people ever truly learn or hear of in any formal teaching environments.
The largest man-made explosion was over Novaya Zemlya island in the Arctic Ocean on October 30, 1961, it was the Tsar Bomb. This hydrogen bomb actually had a calculated explosive power of 100 megatons of TNT but was reduced to 50 megatons because the Russians themselves considered 100 to be too dangerous. The most important lesson from this explosion was that it makes little sense to build bigger and bigger bombs because at a certain point the effect fizzles out into the atmosphere and eventually into space. The blast wave circled the earth 2.5 times and the bomb triggered earthquakes of magnitude 5.8.
I used to build tunnels all over the country as an explosive expert. My first job was near Bakersfield California in the Tehachapi Mountains for the California Aqueduct. As a Miner, our site was half way up the mountain where we drilled in horizontal with 2 side by side water tunnels. My job at the time was to drive the diesel rig up to the top of the mtn where our powder magazines were and get explosives for the round that was about to be finished. The powderman and I loaded 3,000 pounds of powder on the rig and I talked him into coming down the mtn with me because I saw the lightning meter act up. No sooner than we reached the portal, the top of the mtn blew up as it got hit by a lightning strike and all three magazines blew up with 45,000 lbs of 95% TNT. We watched in awe as car sized boulders flew up into the sky towards the Grapevine vineyards. Man, those farmers were pissed. The guys in the tunnel thought an earthquake struck. The seismographs read over 3.0 all the way to LA. If you want to have an experience, be in a 30' diameter tunnel and from 400' away the concussion of 3 to 4,000 lbs going off will blow you over, like being in a cannon barrel; I did that for 30 years. Now imagine what happened to those German soldiers with 500 tons, beyond comprehension. Look up what a ship berthed at Texas City, Texas did when 24,000 tons plus of Ammonia Nitrate blew up and destroyed the whole port and did for miles around.
A documentary showed the result of one (of 5) mine not exploding during the event triggered by lightning decades later in Belgium. The crater is now a tourist attraction.
Under mining is a tactic that dates all the way back to the medieval era. You mine under the walls of a Castle causing it to collapse They later changed the way castles where built to stop avoid this weakness.
Virtually all of the commonwealth countries employed tunnelling units during the First World War. A small town near us in NZ has a memorial to their tunnelling company, made up of gold miners from local mines, other mining communities have similar reminders. Once in the chalk country these miners came into their own and there are extensive tunnel systems still under the French fields with road signs reflecting the Kiwi tunnellers origins. Huge numbers of men waited in these caverns before receiving the order to break out of the ground, right in front of the German trenches and attack.
One of the most amazing stories about WWI I've heard about is when the allies on the western front made a large tunnel and then used it to build a super flamethrower
I think it might have been a program presented by British actor Tony Robinson ( Baldrick / Black adder and presenter of the archioligy program Time team .) They recreated it and it was terrifying to see the destruction it caused . I think it had the code name Viper ?
It wasn't mentioned but the Germans retook the ridge 2 weeks later. Some of the colour photos used were from an Australian movie called Beneath Hill 60 which is about the "Diggers" experience digging the mines. Well worth a watch if you found this document interesting. Another sad part is that the groups digging were often from the same community (as were soldiers from Australia) so a collapsed mine could wipe out a generation (or two) of miners from small communities much the same as artillery could do with soldiers.
I believe you are wrong when you said that the ridge was captured two weeks later Messines wasnt taken until March / April 1918 and was taken back by the British in the last hundred days
@@notfiveo The Toba event makes Krakotoa look really tiny. Even the 1815 Tambora eruption was a bigger explosion by most measures than the 1883 explosion. However, the blast from the Chicxulub asteroid impact would have been much greater than even Toba.
@@michaelharman9421 you may be right about that, it's been well over a decade since I had read or watched anything about the topic so I may very well have got it wrong, I do recall something to that effect being written at the end of the movie but as I said, it was a while ago now.
Well what a surprise lie that the boche took the ridge back in two weeks.- The BS on you tube about anything German and Japanese is simply relentless and endless
The Ripple Rock explosion was 1,300 tons of tnt that blew off the top of a dangerous navigational hazard in Seymour Narrows on the coast of British Columbia. It was a tunnel from land under the water and up to the near top of the underwater hill.
The battle of Messines wasn’t actually the largest explosion of the First World War, the Halifax explosion was, even though Messines happened before Halifax. If we were to measure both blasts by kiloton, Messines was half a kiloton, while the Halifax explosion was 2.9 kilotons, a small nuclear blast
Along the same line of thought, it was nowhere near "the largest explosion in human history". I'm fairly sure that Krakatoa, Pinatubo, Etna, and Mt St Helens fall within the realm of human history (unless I've just been hearing crazy anti-mountain conspiracy theories), and they might have a different opinion to offer.
The flamethrower was actually the terrifying “Liven’s Projector” and the explosive used wasn’t TNT, it was actually a compound called Amonal, which was a lifting explosive. It’s worth mentioning that William Hacket was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, the highest British award for bravery . Otherwise quite a good précis about the tunnelling war
We were staying in Ypress 2014 for the 100 anniversary of the Christmas Truce and decided in some downtime to locate one of these creators near an old rail line along the Mesine Ridge - we looked at the map and walked about thinking we might have got it wrong area when we suddenly realized we were actually in the creator it was truly massive - far bigger than any football field - no wonder thousands died. Ypress at Christmas is wonderful
They not only used large mines they also used over 100,000lbs of raw Ammonal packed in sacks (ammonium nitrate and aluminium powder) which is the explosive used in mines at the time and it gets very very unstable when wet. Birdcage 1,2 and 4 were not detonated and still contain 86,000lbs of explosive charges. Birdcage 3 which contained 26,000lbs blew in 1955 due to a lightning strike. Peckham 2 still contains 20,000lbs and there is approximately 50,000lbs directly under La Petite Douve Farm. Ammonium nitrate is highly hygroscopic and can build enough heat when damp to self detonate.
YES! During the midievil conflicts a sapper would tunnel beneath a castle wall and plant explosives. Though, nothing as magnificent as what happened here.
I read a book many years ago title “war underground” and I believe it was by Alexander Barrie, it covered pretty much all of the allied mining efforts. At least two were lost when the access tunnels collapsed. I believe one exploded in 1976 during a thunderstorm. The precise location of the other is still unknown. Truly horrific in both conditions and savagery.
Ah! a Highlander! I think that our world would be much different it the millions who perished in the trenches and muddy fields had made it home......we would have people living on the moon and beginning to settle Mars.
@@gavRirvine If i am not mistaken, certain units of the BEF from Scottish provinces were titled Highlanders, distinguished by wearing kilts as their battle dress.....The Kaiser's soldiers referred to them as "Hell's Ladies".....There is a publishing firm called Osprey who specialize in military history; monographs on famous battles and military personnel.
Fact check: ever heard of the Tsar Bomba? This nuclear device was detonated in the early 60s by The USSR. The blast had 50 mega tons of power. That's the equivalent of 50 MILLION tons of tnt.
RAF Fauld was a very large explosion in a munitions storage facility. between 3,500 and 4,400 tons of ordnance exploded on 7th November 1944. About 70 people died in the explosion and subsequent flood from a destroyed reservoir. The crater is about 100 ft deep. About 20 years ago i helped dedicate a memorial bench at the site on Workers' Memorial Day (28th April)
The halifax explosion occured 6 months after this event. Halifax explosion is still the largest accidental non-nuclear explosion ever. The beirut explosion a couple years ago was half the yield, and twice that of this video.
Actually, the largest non nuclear explosion ever was near the end of ww2 was the RAF Fauld explosion, Staffordshire, England. 3,500 to 4,000 tons of high explosives in underground storage. Stored in old gypsum mineworking, part of the excavation and the explosives remain unconnected and un-exploded to this day. Today the site is a secure area, maintained by the MOD. It was manned by Italian prisoners of war. There was near 200 fatalities. The US Navy and its 'Operation Sailor's hat' was a man made explosion in the South Pacific where thousands of tons of high explosives, stacked by hand on a small island that was surrounded by retired US Navy vessels. On ignition, the response and condition from the blast, to the vessels was monitored closely. All to simulate the response of ships at such a distance from the explosive effects of a nuclear weapon, but without the radioactive elements. The amount of TNT used in Sailors hat was comparable to that of RAF Fauld. The difference being, there was less to be learned from Fauld, it being an accident.
The "content creator" didn't make that distinction between conventional and nuclear explosions that you're making. No, they, him, it, whoever, they chose the low hanging fruit of click-bait. NO?😐
My grandfather served in the Australian Expeditionary Force as a miner and sapper in WW1. As both sides of my family came from the eastern and north-eastern goldfields of Western Australian, I've often wondered if it was his background that got him into such a dangerous posting. He was a carpenter by trade, but his hands were burnt with mustard gas in France or Belgium and he never worked in his trade again.
The Halifax Harbour explosion after two munition ships collided…is also right up there! In fact: “Halifax historian Jay White in 1994 concluded: "Halifax Harbour remains unchallenged in overall magnitude as long as five criteria are considered together: number of casualties, force of blast, radius of devastation, quantity of explosive material, and total value of property destroyed."
@@michaelpielorz9283 “not true”??…what are you talking about?…all I said it was “up there with other huge explosions”….what’s NOT TRUE about that? Where did I compare it to Helgoland?….why does everything have end up in an argument?
It was one regular container ship colliding with a munitions ship and the munitions ship caught FIRE then exploded killing about 1800 people in Halifax, So, mostly property damage as water is like a brick wall...not soft.
Wrong! The biggest pre-nuke explosion was in Halifax harbour, December 6, 1917. The Mont Blanc was carrying the equivalent of 2.9 kilotons of explosives: " At least 1,782 people were killed, largely in Halifax and Dartmouth, by the blast, debris, fires, or collapsed buildings, and an estimated 9,000 others were injured. The blast was the largest human-made explosion at the time. It released the equivalent energy of roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT (12 TJ)." I love it when content creators are too stupid to history.
Plus the entire nuclear arms race culminating with the Tsar Bomba test (at half strength!), seeing as they haven’t even bothered to properly caveat their statement of being the largest explosion in human history.
The Port Chicago explosion was only second to this at 2KT because the ship was "only" 40% full of cargo at the time. It was supposed to carry a staggering 12,000 tons of munitions when fully loaded. Or about 5KT if that were to go off at at once. Technically this was before the end of WWI as well.
@@JB-yb4wn you mean right there in the title, “the largest explosion in human history”? That sure seems to be an odd way of writing “pre-nuclear”… maybe it’s pronounced differently, let’s see… at 1:10 they say “one of the largest man-made explosions in all of human history”. Nope, not really helping there.
You must mean man made. Because as enormous as that explosion was, it was almost nothing compared to Tambora and Krakatoa. No Nuclear bomb ever set off comes even near to the power of those volcanos. Mother nature wins again.
“Beaneath Hill 60” was a pretty good movie about this explosion I believe or inspired by this event. I am not 100 percent sure on that but the tunneling aspect of WWI is incredible to see.
Stores like this really are surprising to Americans who really had nothing much to do with the great war. As the Canadian, Australian, New Zealander or a British person of course you will have more likely heard these stories.
@@XxxXxx-fm3wo Your ignorance is appalling. New Zealand had 18,166 combat deaths and 41,317 wounded. Canada had 56,638 combat deaths and 149,732 wounded. Australia had 61,527 combat deaths and 152,171 wounded. The United States had 53,402 combat deaths and 204,002 wounded. Soldiers that died as a result of disease and accident are not listed in these stats. For you to state that the US had nothing much to do with the great war is insulting to the all of the Americans that were killed and wounded in a war that they could have very easily stayed out of.
Oh, but it is in the history books. Depend on where you live, I guess. I live in Belgium, an hour’s drive from Messines, and we were tought this in school.
There's still about 6 of these unexploded. It didn't help that a lot of the ground they had taken got recaptured a few days later. Lightning detonated one a few years back
Saying this is the largest explosion in human history is deceptive, and you only corrected this AFTER the video began. The largest explosion that occurred known by man was Krakatoa in the 1880's
The thing that surprised me the most is that this was happening. I've never heard of this before. I remember seeing a video of one such mine that was found under a farm in France or Belgium, but I didn't know that this was a regular thing until I watched this video.
My understanding is that the largest conventional *non-nuclear) explosion occurred when the British Army tried to blow up Heligoland straight after the war. It did not destroy the whole island, as planned, but punched a huge valley which exists to this day.
@@harrywalker968 Perhaps my age and circumstances….I very rarely if ever see movies. I’m happy to know that others do see movies, such as whatever movie you are speaking of, and have more current knowledge than I. I wish you well.
@@GAMINGLeGend-fw1pi “You’re means “you are”. “Your” is singular or plural possessive of “you have”. I am old now, but grammar was still taught and learned way back then, without the need for spelling and grammar checkers. I wish you well.
The Union Army attempted this in the Civil War. However after the explosion, the Union Soldiers charged the Southerners by running down the Crater, however they were trapped in the crater. It was a slaughter.
there's at least 3 that are documented but they are not thoroughly researched enough to definitively locate and 2 that are well known one that's in a chalk tunnel network in the area below a farm and the one one that blew was in the 1950s due to a lightning strike that penetrated the mine.
I suspect the Halifax explosion in 1917 might have been bigger. The ammunition ship blew right in the narrowest part of the port. The whole end of the city was destroyed. The anchor of the ship was found in a lake over one and a half away from the port. The blast was felt fifty miles away and recorded as an earthquake in Boston.
Little is known about the Canadian "Beaver" who frequently whistled off-key while he was busy digging. He accidentally set off the demolitions causing a cave-in, and became A Flat Minor.
My Great Grandfather fought in WW1, but was lucky enough to be sent home. Minus an arm, an eye, and a back full of shrapnel. He was promoted to Sergeant on the battlefield due his NCO being killed.
Moles, used a technique called clay-kicking to dig through the terrain. The digger would sit at a 45 degree angle with his back against a wooden frame and his feet facing the digging surface. Using a grafting tool that was a kind of combination pogo stick/spade/posthole digger, he would drive the tool into the soil by pushing with his feet on its crossbar, then pass it over his head to a “bagger” who would put the spoil in sandbags so a third worker could get it out on a little hand-cranked trolley. On his way back, the trolley handler would bring in more timber to shore up the tunnel. This process was fast and it was quiet. The Germans were using pickaxes to dig their tunnels, not exactly the best tools for clay removal and by their very nature percussively loud.
Germans were not THAT stupid, however digging in clay would have been slow with a pickaxe and when the clay is wet it is soft like sponge so pickax would be useless as nothing cracks. You could dig faster using just a shovel or your hands.
I was kinda hoping there were some actual killer star-nosed moles working for the army. Idk how much damage they could actually do but it would've been pretty neat to find out lol 😜
@@kemgreene8525 good question lol. I suppose it all depends if they are just blindly going in and getting trampled or if they'd actually get the job done 🤭
I'm pretty certain the Halifax Explosion was the biggest man made explosion until Trinity - the first atomic bomb test. It happened when a ship carrying high explosives collided with another ship and subsequently blew up. It's estimated that the blast was equivalent to 2.9 kilotons of tnt.
I love your videos! And thank you for saying nuclear right... I have no idea how people think nuclear is pronounced "New-cue-ler", but thank you so much!
Cultural colloquialisms. Do you pronounce laboratory as labratory? Cuz that's wrong as well...let people speak how they wish, way too many other things to worry about than the way someone says a word... especially when the meaning is more than clear.
It was 10 times more brutal tho. 10,000 people died in a Instant it rained body parts for a good minute. There was so much blood that it rain blood the next day naturally.
My great grand father was 46 years old when he died in France. He was a miner who was conscripted to dig these tunnels. The story is he died of friendly fire for failing to give the right pass word when somewhere at the front. I always wondered why a 46 year old was fighting at the front till I found out about being conscripted for mining. edit, perhaps he volunteered?. and he got shot because he didn't understand how serious regular soldiers enforced correct password rules. being poorly trained. this vid has shed light on a puzzle I had concerning his death and why it happened. Thank you. RIP Edward Titterington.
In 1955 one of these deep mines that had went unexploded , Detonated in the middle of the night . Making a huge pit ....no casualties at least . There are still some HUGE mines that have never gone off still there , buried
Some more information. Some of those mine craters still exist, are full of water, and have fish in them. There are also 5 unexploded mines in that area and they contain 156,000 pounds of explosives (70, 760kg). Additionally there are uncounted numbers of smaller mines and camouflets there with an undetermined amount of explosives in them. Online you can find images of the still existing craters.
This is far from the largest in human history. It is due to the title's sheer incorrectness that I may actually block this channel again, as it seems far too clickbaity. It isn't even the largest man-made explosion, in fact very far from it. That title goes to the Tsar Bomba, a soviet-made atomic bomb developed in the cold war that had a blast yield of 50 megatons, 10x the collective explosive power of all explosions in ww2, and there are still more that are many times larger than this. I am not discounting any other facts this video states about the event in question, as I've honestly never heard of this specific event until now, but I watched the entirety of the video waiting for you to show me proof of how it was bigger than the many explosions I know are factually much larger. I wasted 27 minutes. Had the title said something even close to what the video was actually about, I probably still would've watched it, but I would've been far more interested had the title not been a pit of objective incorrectness.
Welcome to TH-cam, Sid: One of my suspicions is that Bill Gates' college age investment in picture libraries is paying off at last. We are being deluged with half-wit "documentaries" of undergraduate essays recited to unrelated photographs and other graphics, then passed off to us as TH-cam "knowledge." Unedited, unchecked, and often illiterate and ignorant, these may be the worst single chapted of current "IT," "information" technology. This one is not the worst of the bunch. The text is reasonably competent and the graphics not wildly irrelevant. There is, however, a generation of kids out there in the English-speaking world being subjected to a hurricane of bad education by TH-cam and its advertisers..
The largest man made explosion in history before the atomic bomb was The Halifax Explosion in June 1916 when two ships laden with explosions collided in the harbour at Halifax Nova Scotia in June 1916.
One ship was Swedish so it probably had IKEA furniture aboard and the other ship was a ship loaded with Ammunition - which caught fire then exploded. Twas a foggy night day when it happened. 1800 people in Halifax was killed as it levelled the houses.
@@TheEmpireofTheSSXT bomb is a bomb dip stick nuclair or not its human made bomb and this title is absolute bs this is how you learn kids and people the wrong shit
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The Messines Ridge mines explosion was approximately 500 tons of high explosive -- a massive and terrifying blast, indeed. The Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917, when the ammunition ship Mont Blanc caught fire and detonated, is generally considered to be the largest explosion prior to the invention of atomic warfare (pace Tunguska, Siberia). It was thought to be equivalent to 2.9 kilotonnes (3,200 tons) of high explosive and it totally devastated Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The largest non-nuclear explosion in a military conflict, then?
@@AmedeeVanGasse Yes. It probably was the largest explosion until the Halifax Disaster. I wouldn't want to be caught in either.
Very true..
@@AmedeeVanGasse I think the 1916 Black Tom explosion of ~900 tons would probably qualify as the largest conventional explosion in a military conflict at the time, even though it wasn't on a battlefield. In that case it was German saboteurs who blew up a munitions store on an island in New York Harbor, damaging the Statue of Liberty (one reason why tourists are no longer allowed in the torch to this day). The Lehigh Valley Railroad, which operated the site, sued the Third Reich for $50M but received nothing. After the second world war, the West German government paid LVRR $95M by installments, making the final payment in 1979, at the waning end of the disco era!
I do think it quite touching that the people of Nova Scotia have provided the City of Boston with its official Christmas Tree for over 50 years, in thanks for its assistance to Halifax in 1917. Boston learned of the explosion by telegraph and sent a train with food, water, medical supplies and staff which arrived two days after the explosion to relieve the local medical responders who had been working continuously.
@@principals16842 the greatest hero in Halifax was probably the telegraph operator. He sent out messages to stop the trains that were headed into Halifax, thus saving hundreds of lives. Yeah, I'm sure you can guess why he got recognized posthumously.
Both my grandfathers were in the battle of Passchendaele. One was seriously wounded, and both were captured by the Germans. Both were later released in prisoner exchanges. My father's father was wounded by shell fragments on the whole of his left side by a shell that landed less than six feet from him. He lost an ear and an eye and a couple of tendons. His best friend who was helping him out of the trench was blown to small pieces, but saved granddad's life. He suffered partial deafness and blindness and trouble from all the metal that stuck in him.
Of course they were. You are full of shit pal. You would have to be in your 80's or 90's to have a grandfather that old.
Wurde aber trotzdem 90 nehm ich an. He became 90 nevertheless i assume
My great great uncle fought and died in WW1 during the battle of Passchendaele in 1917. He fought in the British army. His body was never recovered as it sank under the mud. Respect to the brave men who tunneled under the enemy lines as well as the men who fought in the trenches. Lest we forget
Brave men like him are the reason we are free
@@sdimebagedon22 The Germans, Austro-Hungarians and Ottomans were brave men too. We shouldn't forget that both the Entente and Central Powers were human too
That's a true warrior's burial, if you ask me...
@@TheImmoralNosferatuZodd I guess in a way
But it's still sad that his remains are lost forever
There's An Australian movie on this that some of the stills from this clip were taken from called "Beneath Hill 60".
RIP Tiffin.
Edit: I don't know why this comment looks like I am replying to myself.
I'm a certified welder who once worked in Boston with "tunnel rats" for a brief time and I can tell you they would have had no need for basic training & would probably would have been in better shape, even at their age, than most soldiers.
In the Diary of the 3rd Battalion, Auckland (Countess of Ranfurly's Own) and Northland Division, was an incident recorded by the Colonel during WW1 on the Western Front.
They had a party of Sappers attached to them from one of the South Island regiments, from what was Coal Mining country even then. The Regiment took up a position that had been held by one of the Scots Divisions and the officers thought the trenches were EXTREMELY poor, and set about digging, under light, undirected fire, new trenches.
He watched as one of the platoons set to, and noticed that five of the men stood and polished their entrenching tools QUITE thoroughly first. He asked the Major what they thought they were doing, and was told "These are our professionals sir, they know what they are about".
And then watched while they out dug the regulars three to one, and when they were finished their section, carried on and finished the other soldiers work to the same standard.
@@uncletiggermclaren7592 Can't think of anyone better than a Kiwi to sort out neatly that kind of toil.
My buddy Delbert Voyles was a tunnel rat in nam . Lucky man from some of the stories he told. Sorry for prior typo Del.
Go Sox!
My grandfather was a sapper in the Royal Engineers in WW1. It is hard to believe he did work like that.
Same with mine but in WW2 he was a mole
I wonder if he watch the fireworks
A hole shit load of lies
My Great grandfather served a Norwegian defender of ww2, he survived but he died from old age before I was born.
He is the reason we are free
The part that shocked me the most, is that i‘ve learned more about the first world war, by just watching this video, than i‘ve actually learned about it in school…
Thank you for making history interesting!
Yep Why Does School Exist When We Have TH-cam Videos Like This?
@@JTL1980kind To stop you learning *how* to think, and teach you *what* to think.
@@JTL1980kind
It exists so that you can receive more information than a cursory introduction or a brief overview of a particular event. And so that you learn to evaluate and analyze historical events.
Why do I have to explain the value of an education to another adult? Didn’t you have parents?
Same with me a 69 years old German. I never heard about that facts.
My grandfather was there when the Messines Ridge mine was detonated. To my knowledge, he never spoke about it, or precious little of his other extraordinary experiences on the front line . It seems such incredible stories from war veterans stirred little interest at all after they returned. It was also said that many WW1 vets knew no one could possibly believe them in any case, so they - so many millions of them - just, so psychologically unhealthily, bottled these things up. I can't imagine this in an age when we 'moan when our arses are on fire'.
I completely understand the NEED to bottle things up. I'm a veteran, rated 100% Disabled, almost entirely for "mental issues." My most aggravating pain is that my family of origin (siblings, cousins) won't believe me when I say what I experienced. NONE of my disability involves having delusions of anything, but as soon as my family learned I'm "mental," they won't believe anything I say. Now 26 years after being sent home from the military, I've decided to no longer have anything to do with that family. They've been toxic. I've been a fool for trying to win them over.
@bigsmiler5101 so sorry.
Understanding is near impossible tho so needed for any & all.
My GF was there too.
@@bigsmiler5101❤️🩹
An absolutely fascinating and informative video !
I only heard of this monumental undertaking about 5 years ago whilst I was watching a History Channel special on World War 1.
WW I unfortunately, was only skimmed over in my grammar school and high school history courses. I have since that time learned many fascinating facts about that war (to end all wars) which few people ever truly learn or hear of in any formal teaching environments.
The largest man-made explosion was over Novaya Zemlya island in the Arctic Ocean on October 30, 1961, it was the Tsar Bomb. This hydrogen bomb actually had a calculated explosive power of 100 megatons of TNT but was reduced to 50 megatons because the Russians themselves considered 100 to be too dangerous. The most important lesson from this explosion was that it makes little sense to build bigger and bigger bombs because at a certain point the effect fizzles out into the atmosphere and eventually into space. The blast wave circled the earth 2.5 times and the bomb triggered earthquakes of magnitude 5.8.
Thank you. This explosion is just a fart compared to that. Take this like.
It's explosions like these that made the extraterrestrials more curious about us . . . like - WTH are those primitive beings up to now ?. .
I used to build tunnels all over the country as an explosive expert. My first job was near Bakersfield California in the Tehachapi Mountains for the California Aqueduct. As a Miner, our site was half way up the mountain where we drilled in horizontal with 2 side by side water tunnels. My job at the time was to drive the diesel rig up to the top of the mtn where our powder magazines were and get explosives for the round that was about to be finished. The powderman and I loaded 3,000 pounds of powder on the rig and I talked him into coming down the mtn with me because I saw the lightning meter act up. No sooner than we reached the portal, the top of the mtn blew up as it got hit by a lightning strike and all three magazines blew up with 45,000 lbs of 95% TNT. We watched in awe as car sized boulders flew up into the sky towards the Grapevine vineyards. Man, those farmers were pissed. The guys in the tunnel thought an earthquake struck. The seismographs read over 3.0 all the way to LA. If you want to have an experience, be in a 30' diameter tunnel and from 400' away the concussion of 3 to 4,000 lbs going off will blow you over, like being in a cannon barrel; I did that for 30 years. Now imagine what happened to those German soldiers with 500 tons, beyond comprehension. Look up what a ship berthed at Texas City, Texas did when 24,000 tons plus of Ammonia Nitrate blew up and destroyed the whole port and did for miles around.
A documentary showed the result of one (of 5) mine not exploding during the event triggered by lightning decades later in Belgium. The crater is now a tourist attraction.
Under mining is a tactic that dates all the way back to the medieval era.
You mine under the walls of a Castle causing it to collapse
They later changed the way castles where built to stop avoid this weakness.
Those brave men, may they Rest in Peace..😪
Virtually all of the commonwealth countries employed tunnelling units during the First World War. A small town near us in NZ has a memorial to their tunnelling company, made up of gold miners from local mines, other mining communities have similar reminders. Once in the chalk country these miners came into their own and there are extensive tunnel systems still under the French fields with road signs reflecting the Kiwi tunnellers origins. Huge numbers of men waited in these caverns before receiving the order to break out of the ground, right in front of the German trenches and attack.
One of the most amazing stories about WWI I've heard about is when the allies on the western front made a large tunnel and then used it to build a super flamethrower
I watched a tv program where various parts of it was dug up in only recent years.
I think it might have been a program presented by British actor Tony Robinson ( Baldrick / Black adder and presenter of the archioligy program Time team .) They recreated it and it was terrifying to see the destruction it caused . I think it had the code name Viper ?
@@rossbrumby1957time team with Tony Robinson
The biggest part of this story that shocked me the most was how long it took to tell the biggest part of the story
Imagine being a German miner mining and suddenly seeing a enemy that would be really awkward
"Uh..."
That's scary, not awkward. Don't underestimate WW1 D:
**screaming intensifies**
"Oi jerries where are you digging to?"
"wir graben nach deinen schleien britischer hurensohn!"
truely awkward german miner POV: "Uhm... Hallo main feind..."
It wasn't mentioned but the Germans retook the ridge 2 weeks later.
Some of the colour photos used were from an Australian movie called Beneath Hill 60 which is about the "Diggers" experience digging the mines. Well worth a watch if you found this document interesting.
Another sad part is that the groups digging were often from the same community (as were soldiers from Australia) so a collapsed mine could wipe out a generation (or two) of miners from small communities much the same as artillery could do with soldiers.
I believe you are wrong when you said that the ridge was captured two weeks later Messines wasnt taken until March / April 1918 and was taken back by the British in the last hundred days
@@notfiveo The Toba event makes Krakotoa look really tiny.
Even the 1815 Tambora eruption was a bigger explosion by most measures than the 1883 explosion.
However, the blast from the Chicxulub asteroid impact would have been much greater than even Toba.
@@notfiveo also there are many explosions in space that would destroy the solar system. Best to stay on topic eh. 🤔
@@michaelharman9421 you may be right about that, it's been well over a decade since I had read or watched anything about the topic so I may very well have got it wrong, I do recall something to that effect being written at the end of the movie but as I said, it was a while ago now.
Well what a surprise lie that the boche took the ridge back in two weeks.-
The BS on you tube about anything German and Japanese is simply relentless and endless
The Ripple Rock explosion was 1,300 tons of tnt that blew off the top of a dangerous navigational hazard in Seymour Narrows on the coast of British Columbia. It was a tunnel from land under the water and up to the near top of the underwater hill.
The battle of Messines wasn’t actually the largest explosion of the First World War, the Halifax explosion was, even though Messines happened before Halifax. If we were to measure both blasts by kiloton, Messines was half a kiloton, while the Halifax explosion was 2.9 kilotons, a small nuclear blast
Along the same line of thought, it was nowhere near "the largest explosion in human history".
I'm fairly sure that Krakatoa, Pinatubo, Etna, and Mt St Helens fall within the realm of human history (unless I've just been hearing crazy anti-mountain conspiracy theories), and they might have a different opinion to offer.
@@mikearmstrong8483those are natural tho... They were obviously talking about human-made explosions😅
@@CarlosGarcia-ze6rt
Yeah. But I like nitpicking about headlines & thumbnails, because sometimes they are very misleading just for bait & click.
@@mikearmstrong8483I do as well, mentioned Krakatoa before in videos with similar headlines. I wasn't sure if Pinatubo exploded or just erupted.
@@paulqueripel3493
Come to think of it, you got me there.
What shocked me most is how long it took to tell this story.
Okay. Let me abbreviate it for you: BANG !
Now, wasn’t that better?
@@johncox2865😂👏
😂
Was looking for the 2x speed button.
Alderon chunks everywhere. Oops, sorry, wrong story line. @@johncox2865
Man!
The way things went is impossible to fake!
These miners were heroes!
Sometimes the truth is stranger then fiction!
The flamethrower was actually the terrifying “Liven’s Projector” and the explosive used wasn’t TNT, it was actually a compound called Amonal, which was a lifting explosive. It’s worth mentioning that William Hacket was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, the highest British award for bravery . Otherwise quite a good précis about the tunnelling war
We were staying in Ypress 2014 for the 100 anniversary of the Christmas Truce and decided in some downtime to locate one of these creators near an old rail line along the Mesine Ridge - we looked at the map and walked about thinking we might have got it wrong area when we suddenly realized we were actually in the creator it was truly massive - far bigger than any football field - no wonder thousands died. Ypress at Christmas is wonderful
The explosion in Halifax Canada was bigger than the messines but it didn’t kill as many people
Correct! 2900 tonnes at Halifax.
They not only used large mines they also used over 100,000lbs of raw Ammonal packed in sacks (ammonium nitrate and aluminium powder) which is the explosive used in mines at the time and it gets very very unstable when wet. Birdcage 1,2 and 4 were not detonated and still contain 86,000lbs of explosive charges. Birdcage 3 which contained 26,000lbs blew in 1955 due to a lightning strike. Peckham 2 still contains 20,000lbs and there is approximately 50,000lbs directly under La Petite Douve Farm. Ammonium nitrate is highly hygroscopic and can build enough heat when damp to self detonate.
Thanks for the history lesson. My grandfather and his father were miners it’s nice to hear praises for miners!!!
Were they bitcoin or etherium miners?
Also, the Halifax explosion of 1917 was also said to be the biggest.
How sad that the diggers suffered so much to save their own country, and today, their politicians are allowing their nation to be invaded.
💯 💯
Politician are traitors
Don't sully thier memory with Zenaphobia
Haha it's a lie America blast them and now blame someone other countries 😂😂😂😂
nonsense
This was not the first time mining had been used. It had been a common action in siege warfare for thousands of years.
YES! During the midievil conflicts a sapper would tunnel beneath a castle wall and plant explosives. Though, nothing as magnificent as what happened here.
I read a book many years ago title “war underground” and I believe it was by Alexander Barrie, it covered pretty much all of the allied mining efforts. At least two were lost when the access tunnels collapsed. I believe one exploded in 1976 during a thunderstorm. The precise location of the other is still unknown. Truly horrific in both conditions and savagery.
That one detonated in 1955 by lightning was in Belgium, if I remembered correctly.
@@GrowFoodSustainably quite possibly, I was going entirely from memory, it is now only a rough guide to previous events!
My great uncle from Scotland, a miner, joined up and was eventually in the Royal Engineers digging in Belgium. He never made it home
Ah! a Highlander! I think that our world would be much different it the millions who perished in the trenches and muddy fields had made it home......we would have people living on the moon and beginning to settle Mars.
@@barneylinet6602 a highlander? what are you talking about?
@@gavRirvine If i am not mistaken, certain units of the BEF from Scottish provinces were titled Highlanders, distinguished by wearing kilts as their battle dress.....The Kaiser's soldiers referred to them as "Hell's Ladies".....There is a publishing firm called Osprey who specialize in military history; monographs on famous battles and military personnel.
@@barneylinet6602 the Black Watch were the ladies from hell
The Halifax explosive of Dec. 6, 1917 was larger. Parts of the ship Mont Blanc, which carried the explosives, were found 5 km from the coast.
The title is misleading..this mine explosion was the largest man made INTENTIONAL explosion. Halifax was much bigger , but also accidental.
Yes, today you will see an anchor on a street in downtown Halifax..
Fact check: ever heard of the Tsar Bomba? This nuclear device was detonated in the early 60s by The USSR. The blast had 50 mega tons of power. That's the equivalent of 50 MILLION tons of tnt.
The 1917 Halifax Explosion during the Great War was actually the largest in overall magnitude prior to the Manhattan Project bombs.
Proud to be Sapper. The Corps of Engineers first to go in battle last to come out always everytime.
9:10 William hackett's group should been called the giga Chad's after him for staying and supporting his mate until the end
Just imagine being a German soldier and hearing a sudden silence on the battlefield…
It is interesting that the term "mine", as in Landmine, comes from the actual process of digging tunnels and mining something.
I wondered about that for decades, until I finally heard this story. Suddenly it made sense.
I am so claustrophobic that just watching this made my flesh crawl. Chapeau to those brave, mad souls that undertook this insane mission!
Such and amazing story and yet I've never heard of it before. Thank you, The narration and animation were excellent
The Maple Leaf flag was adopted in 1965. The Canadians in the World Wars fought (and dug) under the Canadian Red Ensign. Please respect their memory.
RAF Fauld was a very large explosion in a munitions storage facility. between 3,500 and 4,400 tons of ordnance exploded on 7th November 1944. About 70 people died in the explosion and subsequent flood from a destroyed reservoir. The crater is about 100 ft deep. About 20 years ago i helped dedicate a memorial bench at the site on Workers' Memorial Day (28th April)
The Tsar bomba wants to have a word with you
The halifax explosion occured 6 months after this event. Halifax explosion is still the largest accidental non-nuclear explosion ever. The beirut explosion a couple years ago was half the yield, and twice that of this video.
What about the sabotage of the Siberian gas pipeline? That also has been described as the largest non-nuclear explosion ever.
Again not true! Helgoland was much bigger, Video on YT available! please do better researching!!
@@Dranok1 what are you talking about?
Actually, the largest non nuclear explosion ever was near the end of ww2 was the RAF Fauld explosion, Staffordshire, England. 3,500 to 4,000 tons of high explosives in underground storage. Stored in old gypsum mineworking, part of the excavation and the explosives remain unconnected and un-exploded to this day. Today the site is a secure area, maintained by the MOD. It was manned by Italian prisoners of war. There was near 200 fatalities. The US Navy and its 'Operation Sailor's hat' was a man made explosion in the South Pacific where thousands of tons of high explosives, stacked by hand on a small island that was surrounded by retired US Navy vessels. On ignition, the response and condition from the blast, to the vessels was monitored closely. All to simulate the response of ships at such a distance from the explosive effects of a nuclear weapon, but without the radioactive elements. The amount of TNT used in Sailors hat was comparable to that of RAF Fauld. The difference being, there was less to be learned from Fauld, it being an accident.
The "content creator" didn't make that distinction between conventional and nuclear explosions that you're making. No, they, him, it, whoever, they chose the low hanging fruit of click-bait. NO?😐
This is an amazing video. I really like History and being British this is really interesting! Thank you so much :)
Actually, the Halifax explosion was significantly larger than this one.
The explosion shocked me the most.
The part about altering geography made laugh
I thought the Halifax Explosion (Nova Scotia,Canada) on December 6th 1917 was the largest man made explosion until the Atomic bomb.
Thanks very much for this. Very informative and well done!
My grandfather served in the Australian Expeditionary Force as a miner and sapper in WW1. As both sides of my family came from the eastern and north-eastern goldfields of Western Australian, I've often wondered if it was his background that got him into such a dangerous posting. He was a carpenter by trade, but his hands were burnt with mustard gas in France or Belgium and he never worked in his trade again.
I saw a film about this a few years ago its crazy what was done in ww1 it was the biggest man made explosion at the time .
Congratulations 🎊 you have been selected among the shortlisted winner's,
Kindly send a message via the TELEGRAM to acknowledge your Prize.🏆🏆
What's the movie name?
Was it the Australian film “Beneath Hill 60”?
The Halifax Harbour explosion after two munition ships collided…is also right up there! In fact: “Halifax historian Jay White in 1994 concluded: "Halifax Harbour remains unchallenged in overall magnitude as long as five criteria are considered together: number of casualties, force of blast, radius of devastation, quantity of explosive material, and total value of property destroyed."
not true Helgoland was much bigger!
@@michaelpielorz9283 “not true”??…what are you talking about?…all I said it was “up there with other huge explosions”….what’s NOT TRUE about that?
Where did I compare it to Helgoland?….why does everything have end up in an argument?
It was one regular container ship colliding with a munitions ship and the munitions ship caught FIRE then exploded killing about 1800 people in Halifax, So, mostly property damage as water is like a brick wall...not soft.
@@michaelpielorz9283 Helgoland = 3.2 kilotons, Halifax = 2.9 kilotons. Fairly close in the amount of energy released.
Wrong! The biggest pre-nuke explosion was in Halifax harbour, December 6, 1917. The Mont Blanc was carrying the equivalent of 2.9 kilotons of explosives:
" At least 1,782 people were killed, largely in Halifax and Dartmouth, by the blast, debris, fires, or collapsed buildings, and an estimated 9,000 others were injured. The blast was the largest human-made explosion at the time. It released the equivalent energy of roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT (12 TJ)."
I love it when content creators are too stupid to history.
Plus the entire nuclear arms race culminating with the Tsar Bomba test (at half strength!), seeing as they haven’t even bothered to properly caveat their statement of being the largest explosion in human history.
The Port Chicago explosion was only second to this at 2KT because the ship was "only" 40% full of cargo at the time. It was supposed to carry a staggering 12,000 tons of munitions when fully loaded. Or about 5KT if that were to go off at at once. Technically this was before the end of WWI as well.
@@Islacrusez
They said biggest pre nuclear.
@@JB-yb4wn you mean right there in the title, “the largest explosion in human history”? That sure seems to be an odd way of writing “pre-nuclear”… maybe it’s pronounced differently, let’s see… at 1:10 they say “one of the largest man-made explosions in all of human history”. Nope, not really helping there.
You must mean man made. Because as enormous as that explosion was, it was almost nothing compared to Tambora and Krakatoa. No Nuclear bomb ever set off comes even near to the power of those volcanos. Mother nature wins again.
Well done. Once again, the battle turns on seemingly "ordinary" people doing their jobs well. Thank you!
What a pain these guys went through
“Beaneath Hill 60” was a pretty good movie about this explosion I believe or inspired by this event. I am not 100 percent sure on that but the tunneling aspect of WWI is incredible to see.
That's the Australian movie, good eye 😘
I am British and study history and this is very accurate!Great video!
0.5 kiloton blast.
This was really interesting! I know very little about WWI and had never even heard of this. Fascinating, quality content. Well done!
Stores like this really are surprising to Americans who really had nothing much to do with the great war.
As the Canadian, Australian, New Zealander or a British person of course you will have more likely heard these stories.
@@XxxXxx-fm3wo Your ignorance is appalling. New Zealand had 18,166 combat deaths and 41,317 wounded. Canada had 56,638 combat deaths and 149,732 wounded. Australia had 61,527 combat deaths and 152,171 wounded. The United States had 53,402 combat deaths and 204,002 wounded. Soldiers that died as a result of disease and accident are not listed in these stats. For you to state that the US had nothing much to do with the great war is insulting to the all of the Americans that were killed and wounded in a war that they could have very easily stayed out of.
What shocked me the most is this is not taught in the history books
Oh, but it is in the history books. Depend on where you live, I guess. I live in Belgium, an hour’s drive from Messines, and we were tought this in school.
@MyTubeSVp That must be why,I live in the U.S. so they don't put much except for what they want to in our history books
There's still about 6 of these unexploded. It didn't help that a lot of the ground they had taken got recaptured a few days later. Lightning detonated one a few years back
Saying this is the largest explosion in human history is deceptive, and you only corrected this AFTER the video began. The largest explosion that occurred known by man was Krakatoa in the 1880's
The thing that surprised me the most is that this was happening. I've never heard of this before. I remember seeing a video of one such mine that was found under a farm in France or Belgium, but I didn't know that this was a regular thing until I watched this video.
The really big crater from this mine still exists and is a small lake, now.
My understanding is that the largest conventional *non-nuclear) explosion occurred when the British Army tried to blow up Heligoland straight after the war. It did not destroy the whole island, as planned, but punched a huge valley which exists to this day.
Check out the Halifax Explosion.
@@FRLN500 I have and it was not quite so large as the Heligoland one. Of course, it caused much devastation.
This was wildly impressive to us, totally unheard before. Thank you so much! Great story and SO well done! 👍👍
@@Bikes_Onlineyour not even real.
theres a movie on it..
@@harrywalker968 Perhaps my age and circumstances….I very rarely if ever see movies. I’m happy to know that others do see movies, such as whatever movie you are speaking of, and have more current knowledge than I. I wish you well.
@@GAMINGLeGend-fw1pi “You’re means “you are”. “Your” is singular or plural possessive of “you have”. I am old now, but grammar was still taught and learned way back then, without the need for spelling and grammar checkers. I wish you well.
The Union Army attempted this in the Civil War. However after the explosion, the Union Soldiers charged the Southerners by running down the Crater, however they were trapped in the crater. It was a slaughter.
👍How to learn and recall history in a relaxed atmosphere 👏
My grandfather fought in ww1. He was wounded and gased. He spent a couple of years in the hospital recovering
The fact that he finds good scripts to say everytime tho
Shouldn't the title of this video been "ONE OF the largest explosions... etc.?" You know, since you describe it that way in the video?
One of these mines detonated many years later, and I believe there is another that to this date has not exploded.
No one knows exactly where it is right now.
@@glennschemitsch8341 The doco I saw suggested it was under a particular farm.
There are areas in France off limits because of poison gas residue.
there's at least 3 that are documented but they are not thoroughly researched enough to definitively locate and 2 that are well known one that's in a chalk tunnel network in the area below a farm and the one one that blew was in the 1950s due to a lightning strike that penetrated the mine.
I have only heard and read about two with one detonating as you stated.
I suspect the Halifax explosion in 1917 might have been bigger. The ammunition ship blew right in the narrowest part of the port. The whole end of the city was destroyed. The anchor of the ship was found in a lake over one and a half away from the port. The blast was felt fifty miles away and recorded as an earthquake in Boston.
Great video. I was told that the craters could still be seen today - would be cool if you could add something about that.
The largest crater formed a lake, a rather large, oddly located lake.
They are visible on Google Earth
It should be "man made explosion." The explosion of Krakatoa in 1883 was by far the largest explosion (known) in human history.
Now This Is Why We Need To Nerf The Miner
under rated 😆
Little is known about the Canadian "Beaver" who frequently whistled off-key while he was busy digging. He accidentally set off the demolitions causing a cave-in, and became A Flat Minor.
I never knew that tunneling under the trenches existed great job
My Great Grandfather fought in WW1, but was lucky enough to be sent home. Minus an arm, an eye, and a back full of shrapnel. He was promoted to Sergeant on the battlefield due his NCO being killed.
Moles, used a technique called clay-kicking to dig through the terrain. The digger would sit at a 45 degree angle with his back against a wooden frame and his feet facing the digging surface. Using a grafting tool that was a kind of combination pogo stick/spade/posthole digger, he would drive the tool into the soil by pushing with his feet on its crossbar, then pass it over his head to a “bagger” who would put the spoil in sandbags so a third worker could get it out on a little hand-cranked trolley. On his way back, the trolley handler would bring in more timber to shore up the tunnel. This process was fast and it was quiet. The Germans were using pickaxes to dig their tunnels, not exactly the best tools for clay removal and by their very nature percussively loud.
Uhm, ya. He said all that TWICE. No need for you to post it word for word
Germans were not THAT stupid, however digging in clay would have been slow with a pickaxe and when the clay is wet it is soft like sponge so pickax would be useless as nothing cracks. You could dig faster using just a shovel or your hands.
Largest non-nuclear, or conventional explosion.
The largest is still Tsar Bomba or AN602 by the USSR Army.
I was kinda hoping there were some actual killer star-nosed moles working for the army. Idk how much damage they could actually do but it would've been pretty neat to find out lol 😜
"If it were, which ones do you think they might be"? Democrat or Republican "??😅 ❤
@@kemgreene8525 good question lol. I suppose it all depends if they are just blindly going in and getting trampled or if they'd actually get the job done 🤭
There's a 2021 film about this called "The War Below"
Those Clay Kicker's were a special breed.Very strong,hardworking,extremely loyal,brave men.
The largest explosion in history was the Tsar Bomba October 30, 1961. You're welcome!
Conventional bomb.
I'm pretty certain the Halifax Explosion was the biggest man made explosion until Trinity - the first atomic bomb test. It happened when a ship carrying high explosives collided with another ship and subsequently blew up. It's estimated that the blast was equivalent to 2.9 kilotons of tnt.
The Soviet's Tsar Bomba was the largest man-made explosion. It made Trinity look like a firecracker.
Am obsessed with this channel ❤❤❤
Same 😂
Honestly, if this was the voice of your videos, I’d watch more.
I love your videos! And thank you for saying nuclear right... I have no idea how people think nuclear is pronounced "New-cue-ler", but thank you so much!
More like more clear there lol
Cultural colloquialisms. Do you pronounce laboratory as labratory? Cuz that's wrong as well...let people speak how they wish, way too many other things to worry about than the way someone says a word... especially when the meaning is more than clear.
your videos are getting better with time.
nice art, narration, photos and thanks for including the universal metric units.
Wasn't even a fart compared to the power of nuclear.
It was 10 times more brutal tho. 10,000 people died in a Instant it rained body parts for a good minute. There was so much blood that it rain blood the next day naturally.
This was before NUCLEAR Weapons were invented You 👆 SILLYHÉ BHILLÉY
Felt as far away as France, you mean the country just over the border, I am certainly amazed, well done.
Indeed, the closest French border is at some 200 meters from there.
i love your videos
My great grand father was 46 years old when he died in France. He was a miner who was conscripted to dig these tunnels.
The story is he died of friendly fire for failing to give the right pass word when somewhere at the front.
I always wondered why a 46 year old was fighting at the front till I found out about being conscripted for mining.
edit, perhaps he volunteered?. and he got shot because he didn't understand how serious regular soldiers enforced correct password rules.
being poorly trained. this vid has shed light on a puzzle I had concerning his death and why it happened.
Thank you.
RIP Edward Titterington.
In 1955 one of these deep mines that had went unexploded , Detonated in the middle of the night . Making a huge pit ....no casualties at least . There are still some HUGE mines that have never gone off still there , buried
Some more information.
Some of those mine craters still exist, are full of water, and have fish in them.
There are also 5 unexploded mines in that area and they contain 156,000 pounds of explosives (70, 760kg). Additionally there are uncounted numbers of smaller mines and camouflets there with an undetermined amount of explosives in them.
Online you can find images of the still existing craters.
This is not even the largest explosion in human history💀
Also well known!
It was for the 10000 Germans that were killed
The Russians atomic testing in the 60's.
Not even close the largest conventional explosion was at the Climax mine in Colorado.
This is far from the largest in human history. It is due to the title's sheer incorrectness that I may actually block this channel again, as it seems far too clickbaity. It isn't even the largest man-made explosion, in fact very far from it. That title goes to the Tsar Bomba, a soviet-made atomic bomb developed in the cold war that had a blast yield of 50 megatons, 10x the collective explosive power of all explosions in ww2, and there are still more that are many times larger than this.
I am not discounting any other facts this video states about the event in question, as I've honestly never heard of this specific event until now, but I watched the entirety of the video waiting for you to show me proof of how it was bigger than the many explosions I know are factually much larger. I wasted 27 minutes. Had the title said something even close to what the video was actually about, I probably still would've watched it, but I would've been far more interested had the title not been a pit of objective incorrectness.
Welcome to TH-cam, Sid: One of my suspicions is that Bill Gates' college age investment in picture libraries is paying off at last. We are being deluged with half-wit "documentaries" of undergraduate essays recited to unrelated photographs and other graphics, then passed off to us as TH-cam "knowledge." Unedited, unchecked, and often illiterate and ignorant, these may be the worst single chapted of current "IT," "information" technology.
This one is not the worst of the bunch. The text is reasonably competent and the graphics not wildly irrelevant. There is, however, a generation of kids out there in the English-speaking world being subjected to a hurricane of bad education by TH-cam and its advertisers..
Watch the movie HILL 60 it's Australian.... so it doesn't glorify the war, but it's about the tunneling companies...
Pretty grisly work
The largest man made explosion in history before the atomic bomb was The Halifax Explosion in June 1916 when two ships laden with explosions collided in the harbour at Halifax Nova Scotia in June 1916.
One ship was Swedish so it probably had IKEA furniture aboard and the other ship was a ship loaded with Ammunition - which caught fire then exploded. Twas a foggy night day when it happened. 1800 people in Halifax was killed as it levelled the houses.
russian tsar bomb is biggest human explosion misleading title
Explosion as if Bombs non-nuclear
@@TheEmpireofTheSSXT bomb is a bomb dip stick nuclair or not its human made bomb and this title is absolute bs this is how you learn kids and people the wrong shit
its just a video, no need to be rude or emotional about it stranger
@@TheNuno misleading information can do more harm then you think
It was the largest nuclear explosion.
Halifax harbour explosion is the largest non nuclear explosion
Brings the movie Armageddon to mind.